THEY SAY INTERVIEW Bill Ford Jr., Raj Nair, Dave Pericak, Mark Fields Ford management talks Le Mans

They Say

HISTORIC Names such as Foyt, Gurney, McLaren, and Amon await their 21st century counterparts.

Bill Ford Jr., Raj Nair, Dave Pericak, Mark Fields

FORD’S TOP BRASS TALKS GT AND LE MANS Interview

How early was this idea born for the return to Le Mans? WILLIAM “BILL” CLAY FORD JR., EXECUTIVE CHAIRMAN, FORD

Well, one thing to remember is that this program was kept to a very small number of people. I was amazed it didn’t leak—absolutely amazed. I’d go down to the basement of the design center, and you had to walk by the trash bins and everything just to find the room, and then you have the physical key to get in. No hard pass would get you in. But we talked about [racing] from very early days.

How competitive do you think it will be right out of the gate?

We race to win. Period. Now we’re going up against tough players, and you know history would say it takes a few years. We're well aware of all that. But we’re not showing up the first year as a learning experience.

What is the Ford GT like to drive? RAJ NAIR, GROUP VICE PRESIDENT, GLOBAL PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

A lot of times when you’re doing a car, that first out-ofthe-box drive will give you an indication of how that program is going to go. And it was a very good out-of-the-box shakedown.

Historic win aside, why go to the trouble of building an all-new car? Why not come to the Le Mans GTE class with a Mustang?

Some aspects of the Mustang—it’s a very big vehicle. There are absolutely places where it’s appropriate to race against Camaro and others in certain series. But here at Le Mans, where you have the Ferraris and Porsches of the world, you need something that’s going to go head-to-head.

Was the GT really designed from the outset to race at Le Mans before it was designed as a street car? DAVE PERICAK, DIRECTOR, GLOBAL FORD PERFORMANCE

Oh yes. This thing has been

We race to win. Period. ... We’re not showing up the first year as a learning experience.”

designed since day one knowing that it was going to get on the track, this very track. And we ended up putting a license plate on it for the road car. That is the honest truth.

I asked Bill how competitive will this car be, and he said, “We race to win.” What do you say? MARK FIELDS, PRESIDENT AND CEO

We’re not coming here just to show up, just to check a box. Just look at our experience back in ’64, ’65. Who knows how it will turn out, but the wins we have already with this engine, I

PREVIEW Bill Ford Jr. hopes next year’s Le Mans celebration takes place in the pit lane.

think, are pretty impressive. So we’ll come, we’ll be competitive, we’ll race to win, and we’ll see where we end up.

So that leads to the larger question: Why do this? What does this do for the brand?

With any company, your brand is very precious, and you always need to be true to it, nurture it. With this vehicle, it provides a halo for all of the innovation that Raj and his team have been working on for the last decade or so, that we put in a lot of our vehicles—the light-weighting, the EcoBoost, the aerodynamics—so part of the value of this vehicle is to provide that brand building. There are intangible benefits, right? These days, the most challenging thing is making sure your employees are passionate about the business and have a lot of pride in where they work. This provides that. And it provides that link to our past. We used the term “heritage” today. Heritage is just history with a future. And that means a lot to our employees, and that means a lot to Ford Racing fans around the world. So we did it for them. Plus we did it to get more street cred to a lot of the technology that we’re bringing here. Ed Loh